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Biography

Based in New Mexico, Susan Hayre Thelwell works on long-term personal documentary photography projects and teaches photography and photographic technology. Her work has been collected by the New Mexico Museum of Art, the State of New Mexico through the Art in Public Places program, the Palace of the Governors , the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and the Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mitchell’s Lot has been featured in PDN, Zoom, and Fraction. Hayre Thelwell teaches at the Santa Fe Community College, at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, and at various other photography workshops around the United States and in Norway.

Artist Statement

For the past several years I have photographed conservative Christians who are goat ranchers in west Texas (my family) and the Muslims who purchase their goats for the halal (meat prepared in accordance with Islamic law) meat economy in New Jersey and New York. This project is a personal narrative journey with aspects that connect to larger issues in our society.

To tell my story, I have followed the flow of animals from the desert to the city. I have photographed the people and animals that populate the canyonland ranches of Texas’s Trans-Pecos region, and I have photographed and ridden with the truckers who transport the {live?} animals to the east coast. I have photographed the halal facility in Paterson, NJ, and I have gone on delivery to the small ethnic markets in the boroughs surrounding New York City.

This lyric essay has been a rewarding personal experience and over the years it has evolved into a story about how we feed each other on many different levels.